#CornellNYCTech’s New Model Comes with Potential Conflict of Interest

January 24, 2013 at 12:24 pm

Cornell NYC Tech Campus

According to The New York Times, Cornell NYC Tech isn’t just a school, it’s an educational startup where students are “deliverables” and companies that want access to students and professors can choose from a “suite of products” to get it. A close relationship with NY’s tech scene isn’t just an outcome; it’s their raison d’etre. Issac Kramnick, professor of government at Cornell’s Ithaca campus, told the Times, “Now it’s entering an era in which it seems to be interested in for-profit science, and that does require some thinking as to what the fundamental purpose of a university is.”

Cornell NYC Tech’s dean, Daniel Huttenlocher, said there are potential conflicts of interest, particularly when bringing different cultures with different sets of goals together. He told the Times, “if a student that a faculty member is advising is working at a company that the faculty member has a financial interest in, is the faculty member really keeping students’ interests in mind?”